/Have the company open a store where employees can buy necessities like food and clothing on credit. Then the payments could just be taken directly out of their paychecks//what could possibly go wrong?

"I turned my head and started to cry because I was so angry, although she thought I was crying because of the gesture. They just don't get that I'd rather they pay me a better wage so I wouldn't have to go to a food bank."

/Have the company open a store where employees can buy necessities like food and clothing on credit. Then the payments could just be taken directly out of their paychecks//what could possibly go wrong?

Heh, my company lets you link your paycheck with your ID badge, so you can just swipe your badge in the cafeteria and have the money taken out of your paycheck. I'm sure it's all legal (Fortune 500 company and all), but it seems awful close to Hooverville.

/I don't do that//I'd rather put it on the credit card that earns me points

Gordian Cipher:Heh, my company lets you link your paycheck with your ID badge, so you can just swipe your badge in the cafeteria and have the money taken out of your paycheck. I'm sure it's all legal (Fortune 500 company and all), but it seems awful close to Hooverville.

Well, so long as the prices for the food aren't wildly out of line with the market price on the high side, whatever.

Gordian Cipher:/I don't do that//I'd rather put it on the credit card that earns me points

This reminds me of a complaint one of my coworkers had this year: someone on a conference call spent an hour making fun of everyone else on the call because he thought he had muted his phone. Even worse, since he had the volume for the call turned down, every time they stopped the meeting to ask him to stop being an ass he didn't realize they were talking to him.

Many complaints were sent up the chain and his boss sent out a very apologetic email promising that next time he would make sure he was actually on mute.

UPMC is the biggest employer in the region, is one of the largest landowners, and is largely tax exempt. They threatened to cut off service to all Blue Cross customers if BC/BS bought one of the local smaller hospital systems.

Toshiro Mifune's Letter Opener:"I turned my head and started to cry because I was so angry, although she thought I was crying because of the gesture. They just don't get that I'd rather they pay me a better wage so I wouldn't have to go to a food bank."

Damn, just... damn.

That was the quote I was going to post and what you said was close enough to my FFS that I have to give you props for getting here first...

This is what is going to happen to companies forced to provide health care for those who work over 30 hours; no one is going to work over 30 hours and they are going to have to provide their own insurance or they will be penalized.

Hey! If any of you are looking for any last-minute gift ideas for me, I have one. I'd like Frank Shirley, my boss, right here tonight. I want him brought from his happy holiday slumber over there on Melody Lane with all the other rich people and I want him brought right here, with a big ribbon on his head, and I want to look him straight in the eye and I want to tell him what a cheap, lying, no-good, rotten, four-flushing, low-life, snake-licking, dirt-eating, inbred, overstuffed, ignorant, blood-sucking, dog-kissing, brainless, dickless, hopeless, heartless, fat-ass, bug-eyed, stiff-legged, spotty-lipped, worm-headed sack of monkey shait he is!

This is the reason unions form, because the management are douche canoes. Looking at the link to the union gripes they mention that UPMC put up a site with the awesome spelling www.upmccares.com. Alas that website says "The page you are attempting to reach is not available outside the UPMC network."

"The controller's report found that the current total value of all tax-exempt property in the county was $17 billion"

WTF how you get $17B in property in one county?

When was the last time UPMC was audited? They say that they are giving away a lot of free health care, but who knows.

Labor's one of (if not the) biggest cost in healthcare. There's no magic fairy dust that's somehow going to sprinkle more money down for the workers without raising the hospital's costs somehow. And no amount of government intervention is going to change that.